Gunpowder and Lead
by Rorke's Drift
Summary: A collection of stories built off the various lines that follow the Eliot Spencer classic: "I don't like guns."
1. And you know that

_Disclaimers and Author's note:__I still don't own Leverage or any of it's characters, and I'm still just doing this for fun._

_So, I'm breaking my rule of not posting anything until all the pieces are written on this one...a few reasons for this:_

_1) It can stand alone._

_2) The morning after I wrote it, SOMEONE sent me a PM that included the following instruction: "_And write something, dammit :p" _... and apparently I respond positively to peer pressure :D._

_3) I haven't posted anything in ages, the real plot-based story I'm working on still has a long way to go, and this little series is far easier to write than that story!_

_Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!_

* * *

_"I don't like guns ...and you know that." - The Nigerian Job_ *

* * *

Nate did know that. It was how he and Eliot met.

Nate wasn't chasing him, and they weren't working together. They were looking for the same thing – Nate because IYS didn't particularly want to pay out on the insurance policy, Eliot because rumour had it that a clue to the location of the Amber Room's hiding place had been concealed in the frame of the Russian icon in question ... and there were several people willing to pay good money for its retrieval.

They both found it. Simultaneously – which proved to be something of a problem since they effectively exposed each other and were suddenly both at the wrong end of several members of the Russian mafia's guns.

As an introduction, crouching behind empty barrels in a dockyard warehouse as bullets rain down is remarkably efficient.

Nate pulled a pistol from the shoulder holster concealed beneath his suit jacket and started shooting back. Eliot put his back to the barrels, closed his eyes, and listened.

Predictably, Nate ran out of ammunition before the Russians did.

"Give me your gun," Nate's urgent demand was barely audible over the continuing cacophony.

"What?" Eliot asked, opening his eyes.

"Give me your gun," Nate repeated. "I have a better angle from this side."

Eliot shook his head.

"I don't have one," he said, eyes closing again.

"You – what?" Nate turned to look at him as the words penetrated.

He turned incredulously to encounter the bizarre sight of Eliot Spencer crouched calmly amidst a hail of bullets and Russian expletives, an expression of Zen-like concentration on his face.

"What are you doing?" Nate asked in disbelief.

"Counting," Eliot replied briefly.

"Counting what?" Nate demanded, exasperated.

"Bullets and guns," Eliot was terse. "Now, shut up."

Surprisingly, Nate did. And when, a moment late, a particular sound caught Eliot's ear and he opened his eyes to give Nate the single-word directive "Move" before vaulting cat-like over the barrels into the fray, Nate followed that instruction, too.

* * *

Nate would never be entirely sure what exactly happened in those next few seconds. Somewhere in there, the shooting stopped, something flared into brightness and heat then died back down, and there was a series of grunts and sounds of flesh striking flesh interwoven with odd clatterings and splashes. Then silence reigned.

Nate pushed himself up from where he had landed on the concrete floor and took in the scene around him. A small fire was burning itself out near the barrels behind which he and Eliot had crouched, and he counted eight men in various postures of involuntary repose on the warehouse floor. There was a corresponding collection of guns – every one of them missing its ammunition clip – that Eliot was methodically collecting and dropping off the side of the dock into the sea water.

The icon sat unattended on the table where it had been laid out for examination before Nate and Eliot had so inconveniently interrupted one another. Nate moved towards it.

"Leave that," came the curt instruction.

Nate looked over to where Eliot was now bent over one of the bodies, securing its hands behind its back with a zip tie.

"Legally, as the representative of the insurance agency with whom a claim for the theft of this piece has been filed, I can take possession of it," Nate pointed out.

Eliot snorted, no words needed to express his opinion of the relevance of that fact.

"I'm also the one with the gun," Nate tried a more direct argument.

"But no bullets," Eliot countered, with a rather nasty little smile as he moved onto the next set of hands.

"You sure about that?" Nate asked.

"Pretty sure," Eliot replied. "I counted your bullets, too."

Nate nodded.

"I could have another clip, though," he pointed out.

"You could," Eliot agreed. "But you don't."

There wasn't really much point in arguing with that.

Nate changed the subject.

* * *

"So, they're not dead, then," he said, halfway between an observation and in inquiry as he gestured towards Eliot's efforts with the zip ties.

Eliot grunted.

"Interesting," Nate said as Eliot straightened after fastening the final zip tie.

Eliot's gaze shot to meet the blue eyes resting consideringly on him, but didn't reply. He approached the table Nate was leaning up against, looking down at where the icon lay on the cloth in which it had been wrapped.

Eliot picked the icon up to re-wrap it and swore as he discovered that the Russians had been less interested in examining it than in prying it loose from its frame.

"Problem?" Nate asked mildly.

He had noticed the damage, and surmised that theft of the piece had been driven more by the information rumoured to be hidden in its frame than by its own intrinsic value. What that meant for his own likelihood of success in returning to Los Angeles with the icon tucked safely in his luggage depended on how much the retrieval specialist in front of him knew about the icon's history.

Eliot shrugged.

Nate watched as Eliot folded the cloth efficiently around the icon, wheels spinning in his mind. Outgunned by Eliot even when Nate had been armed, he knew he didn't have a chance of taking the icon by force – and his attempts at stealth had so far been equally unfruitful. That left negotiation – which was really more of his strength anyway. Plus, while Eliot had disrupted Nate's original plan to obtain the icon, he had also technically (if somewhat incidentally) saved Nate's life when the shooting started. Maybe there was a way they could both come out ahead...

"Have you heard the story about this icon and the Amber Room?" Nate asked.

The glance Eliot shot him was scathing.

"Of course," he said.

"And you know that information is supposed to be hidden in the frame rather than the icon itself?" Nate continued.

"Where are you going with this?" Eliot sounded suspicious.

"Well, " Nate said. "From the insurance point of view, the main item is the icon itself. So, if I returned that, even if some payout related to the loss of the frame was made, it would still count as a win - and no-one would be chasing down whoever took the frame. Meanwhile, if your employer is mainly interested in the information about the Amber Room, they might not care greatly about the icon itself."

"So you want to split the baby?" Eliot asked.

Nate's face contorted as he considered that interpretation.

"I was thinking more of a cake-cutting metaphor that would give the people who like the icing best larger portions of that, with more of the cake itself going to the people who prefer that – but essentially, yes."

"But if I guess wrong about whether my employer wants more icing or more cake, I won't get paid," Eliot pointed out. "So it seems like my best plan would to be to take the whole cake."

"True," Nate had to concede.

He considered the man in front of him, weighing his next approach. The retrieval specialist was relatively young, late twenties at most, and Nate read military training and control in his every move – edged with a dark disillusionment, true, but still with the spark of professional pride and competitiveness that might make him sympathetic to Nate's cause.

The not-killing thing was interesting, too.

"Okay, here's the thing," Nate took the gamble with a truth. "I have this competition going with another investigator: every year, whichever of us recovers the smaller value of items has to buy the other a really good bottle of whiskey. Right now, I'm trailing by about $40,000...but that icon would put me in a good solid lead."

Eliot laughed.

"So you want me to hand over the icon so that you can win a bottle of scotch? I don't think so, man."

"Irish whiskey," Nate clarified – but Eliot just rolled his eyes.

"There might also be opportunities to work for us in the future," Nate continued. "We contract out sometimes - especially when we already know who has the item the insurance claim is being filed for."

This time Eliot hesitated.

"We pay pretty well," Nate added.

Eliot's smile was humourless.

"You'd have to," he replied, but he obviously wasn't ready to commit to anything yet.

"Who hired you for this job?" Nate asked, moving on to Plan B. "I've worked with a lot of art collectors and enthusiasts over the years. I might know if they're more likely to be interested in the icon or the Amber Room."

"That's confidential," Eliot snapped, although Nate got the impression he might be more used to the syllables of 'classified.'

Maybe Plan C, then.

* * *

"How about this?" Nate removed a folded paper from his inner breast pocket and showed it to Eliot. "It was lying next to the icon – the way it's folded, I suspect it was hidden in the frame. It could be the clue to the Amber Room's location."

This was all true. Nate had given the paper a quick read before pocketing it, and based on its date and the old feel of the paper it could be a coded clue regarding the location of the Amber Room. Of course, it could also be a letter to someone's long-dead sweetheart, but there wasn't any way to tell for sure right then.

Eliot reached for the letter, but Nate slipped it back into his pocket.

"Uh-uh," he said.

The beautiful thing about the letter as a piece of leverage was its fragility: while he didn't stand a chance against Eliot in a test of brute strength, he was more than capable of shredding, burning, or even eating the letter before Eliot could do very much about it.

"So," Nate went on pleasantly, "why don't we both go to your employer, you get paid in full, and then I negotiate a trade of the icon for this letter."

"I get paid first?" Eliot confirmed, sounding suspicious of how easy and beneficial this plan sounded.

"Why not?" Nate shrugged. "It makes no difference to what I want to trade."

"What about my client's confidentiality?" Eliot put forward next.

"Well, that's up to him – or her – isn't it?" Nate asked. "You present the information and then he or she can decide whether it is worth a face-to-face meeting with me – or can arrange some sort of go-between."

Eliot thought about it some more, certain that there must be a catch he wasn't seeing somewhere. But, finally, he agreed. After all, all the problems he could foresee wouldn't be his problems, so why should he worry about preventing them?

"Sounds like I've got nothing to lose," he growled.

Nate smiled.

"Your car or mine?" he asked.

"Mine," Eliot replied immediately. Heaven only knew what Nathan Ford's standards were for rental cars, but Eliot suspect they leaned towards the economy size sedan. And a long drive in one of those after a very reasonable fight with eight Russian mobsters? Simply not happening.

He tucked the icon under his arm and motioned towards the door.

"Let's go," he said.

* * *

Nate took one last look at the still unconscious and neatly trussed collection of Russian mafiosi as he followed Eliot to the exit.

"So," he wanted to know. "What kind of retrieval specialist doesn't carry a gun?"

"The kind that don't like them," Eliot replied, eyes straight ahead. He smirked a little, and added, "Or need them."

* * *

_The End (for now)._

* * *

_Additional author's note:_

_*This is the first piece of what I think will be a five part series. The basic premise is that each instalment is a stand-alone piece written off the various lines that follow Eliot's trademark "I don't like guns" statement. This one came from the pilot. I have to admit that I have never actually heard the "...and you know that" which is supposed to have followed his statement to Nate about not liking guns, but that is how John Rogers says the line goes.. Seeing as he wrote it, I figure he should know!_

_The other lines I can think of, and which will form the basis for future instalments, are as follows:_

_2\. They have a specific range of efficacy. (The Miracle Job)_

_3\. "I thought you didn't like guns?" "Air gun." (The Morning After Job)_

_4\. Never said I couldn't use them.(The Big Bang Job)_

_5\. "You know I have a gun." "Yeah. That's what makes it fair." (The Last Dam Job)_

_My question to all of you is whether I am missing any? If you can think of others, please put them in the Reviews so that people can see which ones have already been suggested._

_Thanks - and see you next time, when I figure out how the next one of these goes!_


	2. They have a specific range of efficacy

_Author's note:__ See Chapter 1 for disclaimers. _

_Thanks for the reviews for Chapter 1 - and the suggestions for other gun-related lines! Writing these snippets is surprisingly fun, so keep the suggestions coming...I think I'm probably going to expand out from the original idea of 'lines that followed some variation of "I don't like guns"' so throw in any good ones you can think of - regardless of whom they are said by or too!_

_Anyhoo, here is the next installment. It's pretty short, but I hope you like it! _

* * *

_"__You see, that's why I don't like guns. They have a specific range of efficacy.__ " __\- The Miracle Job_

* * *

It wasn't a particularly hard concept to grasp. In fact most people got at least half of it – the half about being unlikely to hit what you were aiming for if you were too far away – pretty intuitively. Okay, sure, it still took them a while to figure out where "too far" began, and amateurs wasted a lot of bullets taking shots that made Hail Mary passes look like sure things, but the concept of "too far away" generally penetrated.

"Too close" was a completely different story.

And Eliot kind of got that.

For people not trained to deal with guns and not used to confronting them, a gun held close to the face or pressed into the chest or spine was a hell of an intimidating experience. And for an untrained gunman, the high that came off that intimidation was a hell of a hard thing to resist. The thing was –

The thing was that when you were the one holding the gun, you could never be quite sure you wouldn't run up against the target who knew how to disarm and turn the tables on you.

Eliot knew that. He had learnt it the easy way, having it drilled into him during training until he knew not only the specific range of efficacy of every weapon according to its specs, but the specific range of its efficacy when it was in his hands. He had learnt his lesson well, and he did his instructors proud when he was sent out into the field. The gun became more than a tool; it was an extension of himself – something he could rely on to give him that hair's breadth edge over the other guy who didn't know his weapon, or didn't know what he could and couldn't do with it, quite as well as Eliot did. And maybe he started to take it for granted.

And then Aimee got married and Eliot liberated Croatia, and somewhere in the hurt and the anger and the compromises being made to get the job done, he got sloppy. He started to rely on the gun more than on himself. And then he learnt that lesson the hard way. Because whatever else you might forget about a career of violence and an ugly civil war, the day you walk into a room as the only armed man and still wind up with the gun pressed to your temple in a game of Russian roulette, is not one of them.

So, no, Eliot didn't like guns. He knew them, knew how to use them, and definitely knew how to get them away from the people pointing them at him, but he didn't like them. He didn't like how they could make him forget there were other options for attack and defence, and he didn't like how they could make him underestimate his opponents. Looking at a man down the barrel of a gun always changed your view of him, and Eliot knew you got a clearer read when you were looking up the barrel than down it.

Part of this was a simple matter of the data available to you. If you were the one holding the gun then, assuming your target had noticed the situation, all you had to go on was his reaction: how he held himself under threat, whether his eyes were fixed on the mouth of the barrel, or on your eyes, or on your trigger finger. Whether he stood his ground, or tried to run. Moreover, you couldn't devote your entire concentration to your target (or targets): some of it had to remain focused on your own relationship to that gun – how you held it, whether you were within its range of efficacy, whether you had taken into account all variables like wind and glare and recoil that could destroy an otherwise good shot. And that split in concentration, while necessary, was also dangerous. It was why, when Eliot gained control of a gun during a confrontation, he favoured disabling it over turning it on his opponents.

In contrast, when the gun was in the other man's hands you had a wealth of information at your disposal and your full attention to devote to it. You had, first of all, the man's choice of weapon. That could tell you a lot about how and in what circumstances he was likely to use it. Next you had his stance: nervous, confident, or cocky? And his grip on the gun: One- or two-handed? Efficiently cool and business-like or over-dramatized with gangster flare – or white-knuckled and shaking? Was his finger already on the trigger, or hovering outside the trigger guard? Did he maintain a cautious distance, or was he up in your face, trying to intimidate you and clearly not giving a thought to the possibility that you might disarm him? Did he meet your eyes, or focus on the portion of your anatomy he was aiming for, or did his eyes skitter around?

Take Hardison for example, in that warehouse when the job for Dubenich unravelled. He had held the gun reasonably steadily and confidently, but it was a confidence in the gun and what he expected it to achieve rather than in his experience with it...the kind of confidence you'd see on the kid with the high score on the latest shoot 'em up computer game rather than on the guy who had trained with and lived with his gun day in and day out for years. Hardison's face and stance had "I'm holding this gun but not actually planning on shooting it" written all over them, and his finger was so far from the trigger that Eliot could have disarmed him and broken that finger before Hardison could even have gotten it into place to take the shot. Not to mention the fact that Hardison was standing too damn close – particularly considering that he had watched Eliot take out five armed men in the time it took a bag to drop six feet the night before. Clearly, Hardison hadn't spent much time around either guns or guys who spent a lot of time around guns.

So, yeah, Eliot had been pretty relaxed for a guy with a gun pointed at him when Nate arrived. He was relaxed because, while Hardison had the gun, Eliot had control. That gun was only pointed at him because he had left it there... so far. Oh – and the safety was on. And even if it hadn't been (And, seriously, Hardison fell for that? Smart guy like that should have been able to figure out that, whether the gun's safety was on or not, you didn't look down to check.), Eliot's safety was.

(When Parker showed up, now, it was a different story. Parker held the gun like she meant business, kept herself out of range of anyone trying to disarm her until she was ready to have the gun lowered, and had reflexes like a cat. The gun's safety was off and, well, Eliot had already figured out that Parker didn't have a safety. He was therefore perfectly willing to let Nathan be the one to approach her and take the gun out of active play.)

But anyway, what Hardison didn't know about guns clearly would have filled the hard drive on one of his laptops. For the safety of the team, Eliot couldn't let that situation stand. Besides which he was growing grudgingly fond of the guy – or, at least, used to his particular kind of techno-geek annoyingness. So when they found themselves in the bridge tunnel with the Mexican gangsters who had rolled Nate's priest friend, and one of them put a gun to Eliot's head, he took advantage of the Teachable Moment. He wasn't entirely sure the lesson penetrated – Hardison seemed distracted by his success in the niche of fighting the injured – but it was a start. Until the kid learnt to respect guns, and their limitations, he was only a danger to himself.

A day or so later, when Eliot watched Hardison miss Saint Nicholas with the paintball gun from a distance of eighteen inches, he revised that thought: Hardison was a danger to everyone in the vicinity – except probably the guy he was aiming for.

He brought a dartboard into the office to try to reduce at least one of those dangers, but mostly Eliot tried to keep the danger in check and the guns out of his team mates' hands simply by getting there first. And he didn't mind if the other guy brought a gun to the fight – he might even prefer it. Because a guy with a gun tended not to think past the gun for combat options, and was much less likely to anticipate an unarmed man as a threat.

That was why Eliot didn't like to use guns himself: he didn't like putting his fighting mind in a box, and he didn't like underestimating his opponent.

The other guy was welcome to, however. He could start the fight with a gun if he wanted to – but Eliot would end it without one.

* * *

_The End (Part Deux)._


	3. Air gun

_Author's note: See Chapter 1 for disclaimers._

_Once again, thanks to all those of you reading and/or reviewing! I hope you enjoy this next little bit about Eliot and guns...well, toy guns this time :D. ... Boys and their toys *insert eye roll here*._

* * *

_"I thought you didn't like guns?" __"__Air gun." - The Morning After Job_

* * *

"Never invite a drunk and a loaded shotgun to the same party."

Eliot's grandmother had told him that. He was eight, and wanted to know why she had a shotgun but no bullets.

It was coming up on Christmas, so he had been pretty sure he knew which party she was talking about, but –

"Who's the drunk, Grandma?" he had asked, frowning. "And why don't you just not invite them to your party?"

The look she had given him was one that, about fifteen years later, Eliot would call have 'veiled'.

"Well," she had said eventually, "you can never be sure one won't turn up, invited or not, can you? So why tempt fate?"

Eliot had given this due consideration, and he had to admit that he couldn't fault her logic.

When he had nodded, she had smiled at him and then handed over the string of Christmas lights she had been untangling.

"Here, take those out to your dad," she had told him. "That should finish off the outdoor decorations."

* * *

The lesson Eliot had taken from that little exchange hadn't been literal, but had served him well. Basically, he boiled it down to 'Keep idiots away from guns.'

There wasn't much he could do about the guns they already had – well, except take them away. But he could make sure he wasn't adding fuel to the fire, so to speak.

When he used guns, this meant always maintaining control of his weapon. Actually, that went for any weapon he carried – gun, knife, hand grenade... But guns in particular, because every idiot thought he knew how to use one, and that holding one made him the Lone Ranger, the Terminator, and the Guy in Charge, all rolled into one.

So, yes, maintain control. If you carry a weapon, make sure you know how to use it, are familiar with it,and know exactly where it is at all times. If you aren't physically capable of keeping it in your control, and out of the other guy's, hands, leave it at home. If you don't need it, or don't plan on using it, again, leave it at home.

When he stopped using guns, he adapted these rules to how he dealt the guns the other guys brought to the party: If they weren't in control of them - and Eliot had pretty high standards for 'in control' - take them away. If they were in control, take the control away first, and then the gun. Either way, take the gun out of play, at minimum by separating it from its ammunition.

The problem, he discovered, was the times when an effective disguise meant he couldn't just not carry a gun. You trying playing a cop or FBI agent in states where freakin' elementary school teachers carry guns to work, and see how far it gets you. An empty holster aroused far more suspicion than a less-than-perfect forgery of an ID or badge. He had tried carrying an unloaded weapon, but, unfortunately, too many of the standard issue law enforcement weapons made it far too easy to see when the ammunition clip was missing. He had, on occasion, resorted to loading the weapon with blanks. That way, if someone did get their hands on it, any shot they took was unlikely to be lethal. It wasn't a guarantee, though. And even a blank could be pretty damn disabling.

* * *

The air gun solution had felt like a stroke of genius. Eliot got the idea from a news story about a kid who had scared off a couple of carjackers with a convincing-looking toy gun. Interest piqued and curious as to how "convincing" the toys could be, he had done a little research at the local toy store under the guise of birthday present shopping for his nephew.

He had to say, some of those toys were pretty damn convincing. A couple nearby was arguing over how appropriate that was for toys intended for kids aged six to twelve years: Mom thought it would encourage violence and a cavalier attitude towards firearms and the damage they can wreak; Dad's eloquent rebuttal was along the lines of 'boys will be boys.' Eliot smirked a little, remembering a similar argument from the last of his nephew's birthdays he had actually made it to. The kid had been turning four, and Eliot had found a full miniature sheriff's outfit for his gift – Stetson, boots, vest, star, ... and a toy silver six shooter. The last item had been the point of contention: Uncle Eliot thought it was the best part; Mom wasn't convinced. Dad was a southern Baptist pastor, but hardly a pacifist, and had sided with Eliot.

"Aww, c'mon, Chrissy," he had entreated his wife. "Let the boy have a little fun. Don't try to tell me your brother didn't have toy guns when he was that age – or that you didn't play with them. I've seen the photos of you two having a shoot out in the back yard."

"Yeah, and look how that turned out," Chrissy had said, with a pointed look at her little brother.

But after a moment Chrissy had huffed a sigh and rolled her eyes, and the six shooter had stayed in the gift bag with the rest of the outfit. And the kid had loved it.

Back then, Eliot had still been working for his country – mostly. Enough that he could still say that to his family without feeling like he was lying...but not quite enough that he hadn't looked away under his sister's sharp gaze. Now... His smirk faded as he picked up a box containing a different model gun. Now he had to concede that maybe Chrissy had had a point.

Having had enough of shopping even for fake guns, he simply added the latest box to the stack in his arms and turned to go. As he did so, he realised he had attracted the attention of the arguing couple, whose dispute had faded in their shared disbelief over the toy gun shopping spree the long-haired, plaid-clad man in front of them was apparently going on.

"Shopping for my nephew," Eliot mumbled in explanation, pinned under the twin interrogatory gazes.

The woman's eyebrows inched even closer to her hairline.

"Him and his entire backwoods militia?" she asked, looking pointedly at the stack of boxes Eliot was holding.

Eliot looked down, noticing for the first time that he had gathered a collection of at least half a dozen toy guns, ranging from a pistol to a very authentic-looking AK-47.

"Oh, umm, no," he stammered, embarrassed. "I just – I don't know which one he'll like best. And I – I thought I saw kid over there about the same age, and I was going to ask what he thought..."

Eliot trailed off. He thought he saw the man's lips twitch in amusement as the woman snorted in disbelief, but neither of them said anything more. As he made his escape, he heard the woman address her husband again: "You see, that's exactly why I think we should get Peyton the chemistry set instead of the toy gun."

Eliot snorted a little to himself when he was sure he was out of ear shot. If she knew what he, Hardison and Parker could each do with a kid's chemistry set, she might rethink that recommendation...get the kid some water colours or a trumpet or something. He did, however, take heed of how suspicious a man buying quite such a large stash of toy guns might look and ditched four of them before he got to the cash register. He'd just have to hit another toy store or two to get the full selection to fit Hardison's little collection of law enforcement costumes.

Or maybe enlist Parker's help. She'd get a kick out of the job.

* * *

The effort was all worth it when the interference of Moreau's sniper meant they had to end the Vector job flying by the seat of their collective pants.

They had Moreau's codes, so, from that point of view, it no longer mattered if Vector testified. But to get justice for their client – not just the money he had lost, but justice – they still needed to invalidate Vector's immunity deal. Which meant preventing him from testifying...or, better yet, making the prosecutor not want his testimony because he had lost credibility with the grand jury. For that, the more unhinged and violent he looked, the better. But, at the same time, it had to be kept in mind that this was a guy with anger management issues who might actually be able to take Eliot in a close fight (even if they weren't on ice), and that the room was full of grand jurors and lawyers. Under those circumstances, no way was Eliot going to let him get his hands on a real gun, even one loaded with blanks: guys with anger problems fell into the same category as drunks on the 'loaded gun party guest list'. And a police officer carrying an unloaded gun would raise too many questions. The air gun, however, was perfect. Unprotected in Eliot's thigh holster, it was too tempting for an agitated Vector to ignore, and while the greatest danger it posed to anyone was if Vector decided to throw it at someone's head, his distraction while trying to get the 'gun' to fire was sufficient for Eliot – or, rather, Eliot, Hardison, and Parker with her tazer – to subdue him.

The biggest surprise, actually, was Hardison having walked around all day without realising he and Eliot were both packing air guns. The guy was smart enough to create an alias that could get a genuine Boston P.D. cruiser, but it never occurred to him to check what weapons he was and wasn't carrying? Never mind Parker and her joy in tazing people, that kind of obliviousness was the real menace to public safety. With the dual threat of Moreau and the Italian hanging over their heads, Eliot didn't have time to do anything about it right then. But, assuming that, one way or another, they managed to take Moreau down, and that the team somehow came out of that intact, there were definitely some classes in basic gun safety in Hardison's future.

Or maybe he could find a hacker who could write basic gun safety protocols into one of Hardison's little computer game things. That was probably the only way the kid would actually pay attention and learn something.

* * *

_The End. (because all good things come in threes? well, until the fourth one of these things writes itself...)_

* * *

_PS. The next one might take a little time...I'm not sure how the next couple of snippets go, and I feel like I'm already starting to repeat themes. Maybe this is a sign that I should spend a bit more writing time on the story that is trying to have a plot to hold its bits and pieces together. :D_

_Alternatively, maybe it is a sign that the other characters each need a similar series. If that is the case, what might their "signature lines" or themes equivalent to Eliot's "I don't like guns" be? For example, Hardison's might be "Age of the Geek, baby" (although what I will do with THAT is a mystery given that my approach to technology is generally along the lines of 'keep pushing buttons until something happens, and, when it does, close your eyes and hope for the best!')._


	4. I heard you'd gone soft

_Author's note: See Chapter 1 for disclaimers...I'm still just playing :)._

_Well, it seems I cannot leave Eliot and his guns alone. Here is another short one. And, also, a quick shout out for Twilight Dusk's "I'm Just Sayin'" collection: number 29 has an awesome take on the 'Eliot doesn't like guns' theme - if you haven't already, go and read it! (and the other 28 stories in the collection: it's like climbing inside a character's head during key moments in some of the episodes)_

_See you next time!_

* * *

_"__I heard you'd gone soft." – The Big Bang Job_

* * *

Eliot doesn't even bother rolling his eyes at Chapman's statement.

_Soft_. And that was just about the gun thing. A small voice at the back of Eliot's mind wonders what Chapman would say if he knew about the not-killing-people thing.

Not that he cares, of course.

Even before Eliot had walked away from Moreau and stopped accepting lethal assignments, he and Chapman had failed to see eye-to-eye on how jobs should be done.

Chapman liked a big bang and a high body count. He would hang around, watching the drama of the emergency response to the carnage he had caused unfold, waiting for the television cameras to follow. Sometimes he would even get in on the action, staying just close enough to get covered in the dust from an explosion or grazed by a 'stray' bullet in a drive-by, or joining other bystanders pulling victims from the wreckage, and then being interviewed as an eyewitness. Or he would peel away from the scene at top speed, tires squealing, pushing the adrenalin high of a completed job up a notch as he raced through city streets. He claimed the publicity this garnered, the reputation of being willing to take out everyone and anything to get his target, was key to the intimidation Moreau's name invoked.

Eliot thought this was grandstanding that did a poor job of justifying Chapman's addiction to the adrenalin high.

He favoured precision over media coverage. Most of the world never heard about his exploits, but the people who needed to know who he was did – and they knew that when they hired him, the job would be done efficiently, on time, and with no 'surprises' that might come back to haunt them. Alternatively, they knew when he appeared in front of them unsummoned that this was it, and he was there for them, no mistakes, no appeals, and no collateral damage.

Chapman couldn't understand how all this ghosting around in the dark garnered Eliot Spencer a reputation that had grown men with their own lists of unsavoury accomplishments behind them shaking in their boots. Or expensive Italian loafers, as the case may be.

Back in the day, when occasion had called for Eliot and Chapman to collaborate on a job, this had been a point of hot contention. Eliot's plans had always carried the day – veto power being one of the perks of being Moreau's right-hand man – and he tried to be the one driving when exit time came.

But now, as he slides out of Atherton's car and back into Chapman's, Eliot is grateful for Chapman's preference for more remote means of assassination and execution: Even with Atherton's cooperation – and two hours of coaching from Sophie the night before on the proper performance of a death scene – he doesn't think they could have sold the scene had Chapman been more familiar with the up-close-and-personal methods of killing...had known, for example, how the body jerks and shudders, desperately seeking oxygen as your inner elbow crushes down on the trachea and your forearm squeezes tight on the carotid; or the distinctive, instant nerveless of a man's body as you snap his neck, the final breath hissing past his lips as the diaphragm and intercostal muscles relax, deflating his lungs.

_Soft_, Eliot thinks again. Chapman has no idea. Maintaining your _sangfroid_ as a blast levels a building or as your finger squeezes a trigger to send a bullet into a target, no matter how close, is nothing compared to keeping that cool objectivity when you literally hold a man's life in your hands, and are feeling it beat, breathe, tremble, and sweat within them. And, in turn, ending it in that latter scenario can be nothing next to sparing it – to trusting yourself to find just that right level of incapacitation to avoid permanent damage while still enabling a clean getaway for yourself and your team. Not to mention living with the risk that you have misjudged it and that, someday, somebody is going to make you or someone you care about pay for that mistake. No. Strange as it may sound, Chapman is far to squeamish for that.

Not Moreau, though, Eliot thinks as he eyes the glove box where the gun he was 'supposed' to use for this job sits. Moreau knows full well the delicate torture of suspense, of showing what he knows about you without revealing how he intends to use it. Eliot doesn't doubt for a second that Moreau's instructions specified the gun, but he knows the real message had nothing to do with the method by which he took care of Atherton. Rather, it was Moreau toying with him, pushing his buttons, and reminding him that, while their history might buy Eliot an opportunity to broker a deal, there was no reservoir of trust to draw on, and that punishment for any breach of their agreement would be exacted in a uniquely personal manner.

_I do know you_, Moreau's words at the pool echo ominously in Eliot's head.

He hopes that the next gun Moreau places in his hands will be as easy to put down.

* * *

_This End (as opposed to The End :D)._


	5. Never said I couldn't use them

_Author's Note: So, ummm, long time no see and all that. I found the following story wandering around my document files and realised I had never got around to posting it, so thought I should probably wander over into this corner of the internet again...especially since it is the story for probably the most iconic "I don't like guns" moment. I hope you enjoy it! See you next time inspiration strikes :)._

_PS. I think I might be a little behind on review responses...If you left one and I haven't replied yet, my apologies! I am going to wander over there next and hopefully catch up. Unless I get distracted by all the stories other people have been posting that I missed!_

* * *

_"__Never said I couldn't use them." – The Big Bang Job_

* * *

The next gun...Well.

Eliot did put it – them – down...Tossed them aside, actually, in an insouciant piece of bravado for his audience of none. But that wasn't the point. Because he picked them up first, and used them.

And that was his choice.

Well, it was and it wasn't. Moreau had him backed into a corner. He could have left the gun where it lay on the ground, and done his best to shepherd Nate and the Italian through the kill box to the door in the hope that one of them would make it out and be able to take Moreau down. But the odds of it working out like that weren't good. And Moreau was a big threat to leave unchecked.

Which left the alternative.

Looking down at the gun, Eliot knew that he could get Nate and the Italian – and himself - out. As the Italian looked from him to the gun and back again, he knew she knew it too. Although she might, possibly, have been less certain than he was that would be following them out that door.

Moreau, Eliot knew, would have no such doubts.

Nate was a step behind, unwilling to acknowledge the option until Eliot had the gun in his hands.

"Eliot, listen..."

It was the opening either to an offer for Eliot to put the gun back down and damn the consequences for Nate or anyone else, or to a request that Eliot put aside the boundaries he had set for himself when he got out of the hired gun game.

Eliot didn't want to hear how the sentence ended.

Moreau might have forced this choice on Eliot, but Eliot was damned if he was going to let it be forced on Nate.

Nate, who acknowledged and drew on Eliot's specialised skills, but had never expected him to use them on a job. Even in that grim moment at the park the previous day, it had turned out that only Eliot had been considering the possibility he might have to actually kill Atherton.

So, no. There was a gun, and Eliot knew how to use it. Moreau won whether or not Eliot used it, but in one of those choices, only Eliot lost. He could still buy Nate a victory.

"Get her out of here," Eliot told Nate, nodding at the Italian.

The handgrip of the gun fit snugly in his palm, as if it had been made just for him – the perfect weight and balance at the end of his arm, bringing everything into slightly clearer focus. Timing, trajectory, strategy, and cover. All things he would have been thinking about and calculating in any fight, but that now seemed to flow through him – a flicker of movement caught in the corner of his eye translated effortlessly into the movements needed to avoid and then eliminate the threat. Eliot gained another gun and there in his mind's eye, even as he returned fire and dove for cover in a better vantage point, his path out was crystal clear. He had tried hard to forget the exhilarating high this brought – the world in brighter colours and more perfect angles and rhythm than even the best endorphin rush or chemical high could achieve. He had all the time in the world, every action planned and its possible consequences anticipated and accounted for. As he slid across the floor on his knees, bullets whizzing so close above his chest that he felt the air cleave at their passing, he knew that every one of his bullets was finding its target, his heartbeat marking the time and distance needed to aim those shots for which he didn't have line of sight.

Eliot had four bullets left when the guns around him fell silent. He waited a beat, just to be sure, then took final aim at a barrel marked 'flammable' and ignited an inferno.

It was symbolic as much as practical: years' of work to avoid taking more lives going up in flames as the work of as many minutes tipped his head count into the next decade.

The sound of a gun being cocked behind him echoed above the roar of the flames.

"You said you didn't like guns."

Chapman, of course. Cocky little bastard couldn't resist the drama of this moment. He sounded smug, as if he had caught Eliot in a lie. It would have annoyed Eliot, except that he was still coasting down from his perfect high, ice water running through his veins.

He turned.

"I don't," he said, a cold truth dousing the heat from the flames behind him.

Utter surprise swept the smug expression from Chapman's face as Eliot raised a gun and fired. He wondered idly, as Chapman crumpled to the floor, whether the surprise had been at Eliot's statement or the speed of his draw.

"Never said I couldn't use them," Eliot added.

And if Chapman hadn't known that, he should have. It wasn't like Eliot's training and skill with weaponry was even a badly kept secret – and given that Chapman had taken over Eliot's role with Moreau, he had had access to more information than most. He could and should have taken advantage of that – and his failure to do so had cost a lot of men their lives. Not good men, granted, but still unacceptable.

Speaking of cost, Eliot had one more score to settle for the afternoon. Some small part of him considered taking the guns to that job – there would be a poetic justice to turning Moreau's recreation of Eliot Spencer into his own downfall ... not to mention the tempting certainty of Moreau's ending with a single shot where Eliot found him. But something stopped him.

Moreau might have forced his hand into picking the gun back up, but there was nothing now to force him to keep holding it.

Eliot felt flames of anger start to lick at the icy calm still settled over him. This was his choice, too, and he was going to go after Moreau his way. And that meant no gun.

He ejected the clips with the remaining bullets from both guns and tossed them aside. Over the years, the move had become so automatic that he barely noticed it. This was different, though. There was a wrench to it, as if it was more than just the weapon being discarded. He would need time to get the reflex action back. In the meantime, he forced nonchalance into the act. He might be throwing down more than just empty weapons, but it wasn't anything he was prepared to want.

Eliot's anger at Moreau was growing – anger at the way Moreau had manipulated him, at the choices he was being forced to make again, at the threat they posed to his relationship with the team. By the time he reached the hangar and found Nate taunting Moreau, and Moreau in turn holding Nate at gun point, it had built to a full head.

That gun was the last straw for Eliot – or, alternatively, the license he needed to attack.

"You got one shot, Moreau!" he yelled the warning.

He was taking Moreau his way, and that meant a fair fight.

Moreau's gamble on shooting the Italian was a surprise, but not enough to slow Eliot's momentum. That required Nate physically grabbing him, getting in his face and reminding him that there were other ways to deal with Moreau – ways, although he didn't say it, that would destroy Moreau but keep Eliot intact.

It slowed Eliot enough for Moreau to get safely into the plane. And he was grateful to Nate for pulling him back. Mostly.

But as Eliot stripped his shirt off, as he pressed it to the Italian's wound to slow the bleeding, and as he watched first the paramedics, and then the rest of the team, arrive, his palms tingled, itching for the familiar weight of a loaded gun.

No, Eliot never said he couldn't use guns.

And there was a very good reason for that.

* * *

_The (Fifth) End._


	6. I'm your huckleberry

_Author's note: __see Chapter 1 for disclaimers._

_I missed Leverage. Since my DVDs are currently buried at the bottom of a box, and someone very inconveniently decided to cancel Leverage a few years back, this seemed like the best solution to that problem :)._

* * *

_"__I'm your huckleberry." - The Last Dam Job_

* * *

There's a gun in his hand.

Again.

But this time, the man at the other end of the barrel isn't shooting at him, isn't an immediate threat to his survival, or to his team's. This man is unarmed, on the ground like an upended turtle, naked fear stamped across his face.

Yet Eliot doesn't lower the gun.

"What are you doing?"

Sophie.

Oh, God. Sophie is right there.

He doesn't want her to see this. He hadn't wanted any of them to know about the warehouse full of Moreau's men, and he does not want her to see this.

"What are you doing?"

In his peripheral vision, Eliot sees Sophie move, trying to get into his line of sight as she repeats her question.

He doesn't look up.

It isn't like he has an answer for her, anyway. He hears the anxiety in her voice, along with the note of warning, and he knows what she thinks he is doing.

Maybe he is.

It seems like it would be such an easy solution: one shot, and this man, this weasel, in front of him - who has schemed and plotted and caused endless trouble for his team, who trapped and killed Nate's father as nothing more than bait, and, somehow, with that act ripped apart an essential piece of the Honest Man in Nate that had survived his son's death and his years as a drunkard and a thief – this man would be gone, for ever and for always.

With Dubenich out of the way, Latimer would be easy enough to deal with. And the attention from law enforcement that Dubenich had directed towards the Leverage team was nothing they couldn't handle. They could pack up, move to a new city - a new country, even – and start again.

And Nate's hands would still be clean.

Eliot knows Nate. He knows exactly the kind of vengeance Nate is envisioning – and exactly how stubbornly Nate is ignoring Eliot's warning about that vengeance not being worth its cost. The unintended genius of Dubenich's plan is that nothing can destroy Nathan Ford more effectively than Nate will himself if he succeeds in his current plan for taking out Dubenich.

Eliot can't just stand by and watch that happen.

"I'm thinking about saving my friend some trouble," he tells Sophie.

And that is exactly what he is doing: thinking.

He's had the perfect shot lined up on Dubenich for lifetimes, now, but still hasn't pulled the trigger. Such a delay, particularly in front of an audience, would have been unthinkable for the Eliot Spencer who had made a deal with Moreau in Belgrade.

_You're not that man anymore_, Sophie had told him, barely more than a year ago.

At the time, he'd been a little frustrated by her naïveté, knowing he would always be "that man" in ways that Sophie, who grows and sheds identities like second skins, will fully understand; but he had also been resigned to disappointing her if need be. Taking Moreau down would have been worth it, even if it had cost Eliot his place on the Leverage team.

Not long after that conversation, Eliot had been more "that man" than he had in a long time – but, so far as he knew, Nate had kept his secret, and he'd had another year with the team to re-mark the boundaries he had set for himself and re-establish a sense of self within them.

And, now, as he hesitates, Eliot thinks maybe Sophie was closer to being right than she was a year ago.

It's not that the kid with God in his heart, a flag on his shoulder, and clean hands has found his way back into Eliot's mirror. He'd meant what he'd said to Nate about having killed that kid along with his first victim. And Eliot hadn't stopped there: he'd spent the next decade digging a grave and then heaping dirt and rubble in on top of the corpse.

But, lately, Eliot thinks he has been catching glimpses in the mirror of a man who, while not the man that kid should have grown into nor one able to fit the place that man should have had, might nonetheless be one who can finally give the kid the funeral he deserves and lay him to rest.

Eliot wants to give this new man that chance.

He's already almost lost him once. In that warehouse, picking up that first gun, he'd thought he was smothering the budding growth – and accepting that had carried him through the ensuing fight, right up to the final shot that took down Chapman, without a pause questioning his actions. But somehow, just a few weeks later, stuck in a crevasse with Parker while she struggled with a newly awakened conscience and connection with other people, he'd felt stirrings of life.

What he was capable of doing – what he was willing to do – didn't have to make him bad; it could just make him ... him.

It was just the flicker of a candle flame in the dark, but enough to hold onto a tentative hope that, this time, he wasn't going to have to rebuild from scratch.

As he'd told Parker, such capability could be a gift or a curse, and the choice between those was his – one he would have to keep making every time a situation arose in which the final solution looked like the best, or even the only, solution.

And this time – this time it isn't.

Nate has a plan, and Eliot is going to have to trust that somewhere in that plan there is room for Nate to make his own choice to keep his hands clean. If Eliot takes that chance away from Nate ... well, he doesn't really want to think about what hopes for both their futures he might be taking out with Dubenich if he chooses that path.

Eliot lowers the gun, hands moving automatically to empty the bullets. He feels the release of his own relief echoing back from Sophie – and hopes that neither of them will be regretting his choice just as strongly soon.

He's expecting mockery from Quinn. Eliot Spencer, a hitter whose name still makes men tremble in their shoes years after he got out of the game, unable to shoot a man presented to him on a platter? He can practically feel the clandestine communication channels start to vibrate with the news. But Quinn seems more amused than anything – perhaps assuming that Eliot's hesitation had been about disobeying Nate's instructions about leaving Dubenich to him. At any rate, he keeps his thoughts largely to himself.

"Hell, next time, give me the gun," is Quinn's only comment. "I'm your Huckleberry."

"Here," Eliot hands him the empty gun as they walk away.

It's a pointless gesture, and one Eliot's glad no-one is likely to quiz him about.

"Little late now," Quinn drawls.

Eliot ignores that comment.

"Love that movie," he says, changing the topic.

"Who the hell doesn't?" Quinn replies, tucking the gun out of sight.

And, with that, it's over. Eliot feels the weight of the choice lift from his shoulders even as his worry about Nate's plans settles more heavily. He's done his best to warn Nate, but he's under no illusions that Nate will let that warning override his commitment to vengeance.

Eliot hopes Sophie has another trick or two up her sleeve – preferably one with blonde hair, a mind that keeps up with the labyrinthine twists of Nate Ford's brain, and an uncanny ability to reconnect Nathan Ford to the honest man he'd been before this all began.

* * *

_Another End._


End file.
